Canada Post will end door-to-door delivery for 485,000 more addresses in 2027, moving them to community mailboxes. For ecommerce shippers and the US retailers selling into Canada, it forces a question about who handles the last mile.
The rollout: The 2027 wave lands squarely in the major metros. Ontario leads with 158,000 addresses, including the Toronto area and Ottawa, followed by Quebec at 139,000 across Montreal, Laval and Quebec City. It builds on the 136,000 addresses announced in April, and marks the first instalment of a plan to convert Canada Post’s remaining 4 million door-to-door addresses over roughly five years.
The driver is money: A record C$1.57 billion loss before tax in 2025, the largest in the company’s history, is what’s pushing the conversion, since door-to-door costs more per stop than a community mailbox. The bleeding hasn't stopped either: the Q1 2026 loss came in at C$205 million, up C$164 million from the same quarter a year earlier.
The delivery promise: For shippers, the mailbox shift forces a carrier choice.
Canada Post says more than 80% of parcels fit into a community mailbox’s individual or parcel compartment, with the rest going to the door or held for pickup. The remaining 20%, plus signature deliveries and the friction of a key-based box, is what pushes retailers toward Purolator, FedEx or UPS at higher cost to protect the doorstep experience. Canada Post’s parcel share has already fallen from 62% in 2019 to 26.7% in 2024.
“For retailers who can’t afford to roll the dice on labor peace,” Michael Ashley Schulman of Running Point Capital told BNN Bloomberg, “their T-shirts and iPhone cases hop over to brown or purple vans at the first whiff of trouble.”
Zoom out: The two big national posts are running opposite plays. USPS is opening its last-mile network to outside shippers to chase revenue, while Canada Post is shrinking its own footprint to cut costs.
Dig deeper:
Canada Post newsroom for the conversion roadmap and financial results
